This past weekend arguably saw the largest number of original films enter the streaming and VOD markets since movie theaters closed down in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. While “Palm Springs” looks like it was the first significant movie hit in Hulu history it’s clear that another film dominated viewership across the globe. That blockbuster is “The Old Guard,” directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, and chances are when you read this story it will still be ranked as the no. 1 most-watched piece of content on Netflix.
READ MORE: Gina Prince-Bythewood Assembles Immortal Avengers with “The Old Guard” [Review]
This is a major moment for a critically acclaimed filmmaker who has been grossly overlooked by the powers that be. In fact, the idea that someone with Prince-Bythewood’s track record (“Love and Basketball,” “The Secret Life of Bees” and “Beyond the Lights”) wasn’t getting more love from the majors over the past two decades is a textbook example of how the industry has willfully looked the other way when talented directors who don’t happen to be white men are deserving of consideration. Two years ago, however, Skydance brought Prince-Bythewood on to helm the largest production of her career, an adaption of Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández‘s comic creation “The Old Guard.”
Featuring a screenplay by Rucka, the Skydance production centers on a group of immortals led by Andy (Charlize Theron) who have tried to keep themselves under the radar for hundreds of years. When a new immortal appears on the scene, Nile (Kiki Layne), the small band of warriors must try to safely recruit her while avoiding a corrupt healthcare CEO (Harry Melling) who intends to use their still-living bodies as sources of futuristic medical advances. The film features some impressive fight sequences from Theron and Layne, in particular, that Prince-Bythewood wonderfully captures in as realistic and grounded fashion as possible.
Prince-Bythewood jumped on the phone Monday to discuss viewer reaction to “The Old Guard,” her “Mission: Impossible” inspirations, casting Theron and Kyle, teases her next two projects, shares her thoughts on shooting during a pandemic and much more.
_____
The Playlist: Hi Gina, how are you doing?
Gina Prince-Bythewood: I’m good. How are you?
I’m doing good. Congratulations on the movie.
Oh, thank you very much. And I have to say, now that I have this opportunity, you were the first to give such a positive shout out to “Beyond the Lights” back in the day and I’ve never forgotten that. So, thank you.
Oh, that’s very nice of you. But you made an amazing movie! I still to this day wish more people had seen it and will still see it [hint to everyone reading this interview to watch “Beyond the Lights”] But I’m glad I’m talking to you now after the movie has debuted on Netflix because I want to know your thoughts to the reaction from viewers online and it being number one on Netflix. What’s going through your mind?
It’s so many emotions. I mean, this was a two-year journey. It’s a lot of yourself to put into a film like this. So, to be on this side of it now is a really beautiful thing. And the response has been amazing. It’s hard to wrap your head around being number one throughout the world. Because for my entire career, I’ve been told the films I make don’t travel overseas. And so I’ve never gotten a push overseas. And so it’s different in a beautiful way and surreal in some respects. And just the number of people that I respect so much in this industry, I got to wake up to a message from Lin-Manuel [Miranda]. So it’s been fun, certainly.
Are there any things that have popped out that may have surprised you about the reaction or something viewers liked more than you thought they might have?
I would say the love for Joe and Nicky [Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli] I mean, I’d love that the reaction to them has matched my excitement when I read the script and I said, “Wow, I’ve never seen that before.” So that has been one of my favorite things. And the love for Nile, absolutely. It was my hope, and one of the main reasons I took the film to be able to put a young black female hero into the world. So, to see her be so embraced, it’s really great. And honestly, to hear that we’re doing amazing throughout the whole continent of Africa like that and knowing that that is the image coming out of here that’s being so embraced, that’s just so dope to me. And, it’s an action drama, but I was trying to say something and the fact that people are just gaining different things from it on a personal level, as an artist, that’s all that you hope for.
Absolutely. I know that Netflix can be cagey with how much they tell talent how well their projects have done on the service. Have they given you more details on its success than you expected?
Yeah, I think after “Bird Box” that kind of opened the floodgates of them opening up to the world how things are doing, which I think is good. I mean, I think it’s good for filmmakers, I also think it’s good for the audience to know what is connecting out there in the world. So, I’ve been very happy. They’ve been great.
I remember talking to Bong Joon Ho a couple of months after “Okja” had premiered on Netflix and he pulled out his phone and showed how much fan art he’d been tagged in on Instagram for the movie. Are you seeing that yet? I saw a little bit online, but I wasn’t sure if you’ve seen it yet.
No, I haven’t. You know what? I haven’t really gone on hashtag The Old Guard yet. I’ve kind of slipped in and out. Only because for this first weekend I really want to stay on my timeline, which I knew would be a safe place in terms of I just wanted positivity. And it’s a reality, of course. Not everyone is going to see the film and there will be some folks that just don’t like it. And I just didn’t want to feel that, but now it’s been such a great weekend. And I do want to experience all of it. So, hopefully, I’ll get to run across some of those things that you’re talking about.
I wanted to just go really quickly back to the beginning of all this. I know that it sounds like Greg already had a script when they approached you about the project.
Yes.
What made you want to come on board and what made you think in your conversations with Skydance that you could put your stamp on this film?
Well, in reading it, I mean, I really fell in love immediately. I so connected first with Andy’s character and this woman who has lost her sense of purpose, who was just exhausted from the fight. And then reading and finding Nile and being, oh my gosh, there’s this beautiful young black woman who gets to be a hero. And I wanted to put that in the world, not as a sidekick, not as a supporting character, but one of the leads. And then I loved how the story just kept surprising me. I did not know where it was going. And at the end of it, I was moved by the characters, by all of them, and I wanted to know more. And so you get excited as a filmmaker to think I might be able to bring life to these characters and put them up on screen and put them into the world. So I was very excited. And then it’s Skydance.
And Skydance, before this came, I was so obsessed with “M:I6.” I just love that film, and it just it’s just action on another level. And so to walk into that building, it’s intimidating. It is, with all these lifesize things that you’re walking past, lifesize Terminator, lifesize Tom Cruise hanging off a helicopter and “Star Trek.” It’s like, wow, this is the world I’m stepping into. But what made it such a safe, warm room and what gave me the confidence, as you asked, is that they said, “You are sitting here” – and this was Don Granger and Dana Goldberg, David Ellis and Matt Grim – “you are here because we love ‘Love & Basketball’ and ‘Beyond the Lights.’ And we want what you brought to those films, the depth of character, depth of story, we want that for ‘The Old Guard.'” And that was everything. And then I knew it was just about me giving them the confidence that I could handle this size film.
I have to ask you about that because still to this day, I will see people talk not just about “Beyond the Lights,” but about “Love & Basketball” and these are people who aren’t even in maybe the film world about how much that movie means to them. And we’re now like 20 years on from that film. Are even you surprised that it’s resonated this long with so many people?
Oh, of course, of course. It never gets old to hear that somebody is affected or moved by that film. Absolutely. I mean, given the fight it was to get it made, how long it took me to write it, how everybody turned it down. Like the fact that it is in the world 20 years later is amazing me and surreal to me, but also so inspiring because it really did teach me about the power of overcoming no, and that you just need one yes. And it’s really that memory that then when it happened, the same thing happened with “Beyond the Lights,” I had that memory and confidence that, “You know what, what happened with ‘Love & Basketball’ could happen with this. So stay in the fight.” So, it’s really beautiful to me and the fact that both men and women come up to me about that film, that means so much to me.
I’m glad it’s been such a sort of gift that keeps giving for you in a way that you landed “The Old Guard.” Also, for me, if someone tells me that they love “Love & Basketball,” I’m like, “Oh, they’ve got taste.” But back to “The Old Guard.” You’re casting the movie. What about Kiki Layne made you want to cast her?
Honestly, it was five seconds into the audition where I knew it was her. It’s like I’m watching Nile and I’m watching the movie. And the scene she auditioned with is a scene where she gets shot in the head by Andy, as she’s trying to get away. She played the reality of it, not the fantastical conceit of it, but the reality. And I just saw her chops, which just felt next level. She had an innate strength where I believed her as a Marine. I believed her as a warrior and that unique vulnerability that some people have that makes us care and makes us want to watch them. And she embodied all of that. And then it was our conversation after, where, again, in my mind, it’s screaming, “This is Nile! This is Nile!” But wanting to talk about what it would really take to embody Nile, because I knew I wanted her to be able to do most of all the fighting and most of the stunts and what that really means and the amount of what she would really need to put in. And when she said, “I will do whatever it takes to do right by this character and put in the work,” I believed her. And that was it.
Speaking of stunts, can we talk about working with Charlize in that respect? She’s now has a catalog of incredible films where she’s done so much of her own stunts and fight choreography. When she comes onto a film like this, does nothing seem to faze her? Or is that sort of a false assumption based on the work she’s done in the past?
Yeah. I mean, the thing is in casting her, I knew that she had done it before. So I had that trust that she was going to put in the work that it takes. But this was on another level, I feel, given that Andy is supposed to be the best fighter in the world. But she knows every fighting style known to man because she’d been around for 6,000 years. So, it was training on another level and embodying this character that was different. But again, because she’d done it before, I did have that trust and as soon as she got it, she jumped into working out.
Before you started production on the picture, was there one sequence or scene that you kept looking in the script that you were most excited to shoot?
Excited and freaked out about the plane flight because it was the very first thing we shot in the film and I knew it embodied everything I wanted to do with the action in this film, which was being grounded and real. I wanted my female characters to be strong and athletic and skillful. And I knew in the way I wanted to shoot it and kind of, I didn’t want to do any hyper-editing. I didn’t want to have to hide anything. I wanted to be able to tell the story of that fight, of these two women and their different fighting styles and what they’re both bringing into the scene. I wanted to be able to read all of that story. And so I needed it to really be them. That was the first day I was going to see all the training that they put in, was it going to translate? And once Kiki threw that first punch, because, for me, that’s the two tells of whether a woman is athletic and whether you’re going to believe her, punching and running. And that first punch, I was like, “Yeah, I believe that. I believe the intent behind that.” And I knew we were going to be good.
That’s such a great sequence. How many days did it take to shoot in the plane?
Four days.
You got a lot in for four days.
Now, trust me, trust me. Because my template for that scene, in talking with my stunt guys and our amazing fight coordinator, Danny Hernandez, my template and my bar was the bathroom fight in “M:I6” because I think that is a perfect fight scene. And I was like, “I want us to reach for this.” And Danny said, “Well, you know they had four weeks to shoot that. And we have four days.” But I was like, “You know it, damn. But let’s go for it.”
So over our career you’ve directed romances, you’ve done a period drama, you’ve made, arguably, a sports movie, a music movie, and now an action pseudo superhero movie. What do you want to do next?
I want to do our “Braveheart.” That is absolutely one of my goals to do.
Do you have a script or a story that you want to tell specifically?
I do. It’s going to be announced soon. I have two versions of that. One that I am going to do. And then there’s another coming from a different perspective that I’m also incredibly hyped about. Honestly, the only two genres I don’t want to do, I just don’t like horror because I feel like there’s enough evil in the world that I don’t want to live in that, and western. I have no idea why. Those are just the only two, but everything else I’m eager to dig into.
For these two projects that you can’t talk about, are they projects that you’ve been working on for a while, or are they silver linings of the stay at home corona pandemic order?
I’ve had such an incredible working relationship with Skydance, really great. They love movies. I love what they do, such a great creative collaboration. So, one of them came out of that, which I’m super excited about. And then the other, I was fortunate. I had heard about it like a year ago and had just kept my eye on it. And then the perfect kind of timing where it came to me and I feel all my work up to this point, including “The Old Guard” has given me the ability and chance to do this film.
Well, I’m really excited then. My last question for you is you talked to my good friend, Kyle Buchanan and in your conversation, you talked about shooting in this current pandemic/iso situation. And you verbalized how you would be so disappointed if having two CGI people kissing or however it would be because we can’t have actors in that close proximity. And it struck me because I have a lot of friends who are filmmakers and writers. And I feel like there have been so many discussions about what the next six months to a year could be like on the production side. When you’ve talked to studios about moving forward, are these the sort of things that come up? Are lawyers coming in saying, “Hey, to protect ourselves, we have to do this in CG”?
I feel like there’s still so much uncertainty. It is just a reality that we have no leadership at the top and it is permeating every aspect of our lives and it’s really scary and it is absolutely leading to uncertainty. We just don’t know. So it was fascinating to read recently the movie that Zendaya and John David Washington just did, reading how they did that. So it is possible in certain circumstances. Could I do a big historical epic at this very moment? No, because you can’t CGI the hell out of that thing. I mean, so much is just the intimacy of the storytelling. And we can’t ever lose that. No matter how big the film is, it always comes back to character and relationships within it. So I don’t know. I feel like both my things are slated for next year, which is great. And my hope is that at that point we will be in the spot where we don’t have to compromise on things, but there are others that are really eager to get back. My husband [Reggie Rock Bythewood] has a show at Apple. He wants to get back to shooting. Figuring out how to do it. But again, that fact that it has been done suddenly and nobody knew what was happening, that gives me hope that we as an industry will figure it out and figure it out in a safe way.
“The Old Guard” is now available on Netflix worldwide.
